Michigan OCI 2015 Forum

[Anonymous User]

Hoping for some last minute advice! I have a 3.33 (2 years of solid WE, secondary journal) and I have very strong ties to LA. Would it be foolish of me to max out my bid list with LA firms, at the expense of including some New York firms that may be a safety net?

[UnamSanctam]

Hoping for some last minute advice! I have a 3.33 (2 years of solid WE, secondary journal) and I have very strong ties to LA. Would it be foolish of me to max out my bid list with LA firms, at the expense of including some New York firms that may be a safety net?

I would call it risky and I probably wouldn't do it if it were me, but I don't think it would qualify as foolish.

[Vexed]

Hoping for some last minute advice! I have a 3.33 (2 years of solid WE, secondary journal) and I have very strong ties to LA. Would it be foolish of me to max out my bid list with LA firms, at the expense of including some New York firms that may be a safety net?

I'd say it's really risky just from a numbers standpoint. There's not a ton of LA firms attending OCI and amongst those there's only really a handful that have largeish summer associate class sizes. If you're maxing out your bidlist with LA, almost half of your bids are going to be for firms that only take 1-5 summer associates, so the competition for even getting a callback will be tight - and getting an offer will be even tougher.

With median grades you really want to be looking at places that have a decent amount of offers to give out. You don't want to be in a bunch of situations where there's one or two positions available, because with the way the curve works, it's likely that there's somebody out there with a higher GPA than you that could beat you out for the offer.

[Anonymous User]

3.33 GPA with 2 years WE in entrepreneurship. Interested in Corporate M&A/Emerging Growth in CA (ideally LA or SF). Should I bid mostly NY to be safe. Do I still have a shot at firms like Milbank, Cooley, Wilson, Sonsini, Sheappard Mullin, Pilsbury, or Goodwin in CA? I think they all have medians between 3.3-3.4. Which firms should I apply to in NY with these specs and where should I bid them relative to the firms I mentioned? Thanks for your help!

[umichman]

People, I think it really is good for us to keep firm medians confidential. Let's not fuck ourselves over

[Anonymous User]

Sorry umichman. Took the specifics down.

[Mr_Pres1d3nt]

3.33 GPA with 2 years WE in entrepreneurship. Interested in Corporate M&A/Emerging Growth in CA (ideally LA or SF). Should I bid mostly NY to be safe. Do I still have a shot at firms like Milbank, Cooley, Wilson, Sonsini, Sheappard Mullin, Pilsbury, or Goodwin in CA? I think they all have medians between 3.3-3.4. Which firms should I apply to in NY with these specs and where should I bid them relative to the firms I mentioned? Thanks for your help!

People, I think it really is good for us to keep firm medians confidential. Let's not fuck ourselves over

Sorry umichman. I took the specifics down.

[Anonymous User]

3.33 GPA with 2 years WE in entrepreneurship. Interested in Corporate M&A/Emerging Growth in CA (ideally LA or SF). Should I bid mostly NY to be safe. Do I still have a shot at firms like Milbank, Cooley, Wilson, Sonsini, Sheappard Mullin, Pilsbury, or Goodwin in CA? I think they all have medians between 3.3-3.4. Which firms should I apply to in NY with these specs and where should I bid them relative to the firms I mentioned? Thanks for your help!

Yeah those are okay firms to bid on, but as mentioned earlier, you need to keep in mind that most (with the exception of Milbank) are offices with small firm sizes so they'll be competitive. If you're okay with SF you should also probably bid Morgan Lewis, pretty low median GPA and an alright class size. You can also probably reach for Skadden and/or Gibson - their median is a bit above you but you're not out of range.

In terms of NYC firms, you really want to look for firms within your GPA range that have large summer associate class sizes - since you're really considering these to be "safeties", the more opportunities for callbacks/offers the better. You're going to find firms way more beneath your GPA range, which will be good to bid on. Firms like Schulte, Cahill, Hughes Hubbard are up there.

In terms of ordering your bid list, what you want to do is look at last year's data and see what the bid to interview percentage is. Most likely the NYC firms you pick as safety firms to bid on will be at the top of your list because there's simply more people gunning for those and thus it's harder to get them at lower ranks on your list. A lot of CA firms you don't need at the top of your list because there's just not as much competition for them.

A note about bid-to-interview %'s: it's not very clear what the 2014 data represents with regards to firms that are interviewing for multiple offices. It seems that all of the bids for every office are pooled over their interview slots, so you'll want to look beyond just the bid-to-interview numbers for your particular office to see just how high you need to bid a particular firm. If a firm has 21 interview slots and is interviewing for 8 different offices, it might look like some small satellite office like Milwaukee has a really low bid-to-interview % and thus seems super competitive, but it's not necessarily that the specific office is difficult to get, but rather most of the interview slots went to people bidding a more popular office like NYC higher up, so all of the slots were gone before anyone that bid a different office could get an interview.

[Anonymous User]

What did umichman do this time?

[Anonymous User]

Get your bids in people. One hour to go

[Anonymous User]

Bids are now final. Monday we'll know where we're interviewing with.

[LawFirmInterviews]

Hoping for some last minute advice! I have a 3.33 (2 years of solid WE, secondary journal) and I have very strong ties to LA. Would it be foolish of me to max out my bid list with LA firms, at the expense of including some New York firms that may be a safety net?

LA firms will demand greater commitment (obvious reasons like family, residency there, friends, less obvious ways to show commitment is EXTENSIVE knowledge about the LA market and practice) from you than New York firms, much greater. Your grades don't make you a shoo-in, nor does where you go to school. However, New York firms do not necessarily need to be bid that high, especially the larger ones with numerous slots. Again, you will have to consider that these firms typicially hire top 1/3rd candidates from where you are. Lots of things to consider, you have to decide whether you are dead set on LA. Sometimes, even if you are, you have to consider realities, and maybe settle for the chances that NY offers, rather than LA itself. Honestly, it is MUCH easier and a surer thing to go to LA as a 3rd year associate (i get about 20 recruiting calls a day) trained a big New York shop than try to get into a closed market from a distant law school.

Feel free to PM me for more info. I'm a 3rd year at a V15 in NY.

[Anonymous User]

Is there an easy way to get a clean-looking unofficial transcript? I've copied/pasted, but it looks pretty shabby.

[Anonymous User]

How do people set up their living situation for the week(s) following OCI? Do most people go back home, stay in AA as a home base, or just try to schedule everything really tight so they can get firms to comp their stay in NY? Do you just have to suck up the cost if there's a gap in your callback schedule?

[Anonymous User]

Is there an easy way to get a clean-looking unofficial transcript? I've copied/pasted, but it looks pretty shabby.

1. Format the copy/paste info so that it doesn't look like shit. It takes all of 5 minutes, and it's pretty easy to add classes/data for later semesters once you establish a format.
2. Order a PDF of your official transcript through WolverineAccess - it's free, and processes within a few minutes. If this requires an explanation/walkthrough, someone please say so.

[Anonymous User]

They give you printed out transcripts for oci that have a special format that is different from wolverine access

[Anonymous User]

Interview schedule is up

[Anonymous User]

For 2016 OCI, here's where I missed. I wish I woulda reordered the middle part of my bidlist. But I'm happy with 18 screeners so I'll quit complaining.

Missed:

Morgan Lewis - NYC (5)
OMM - NYC (8)
Jones Day - NYC (9)
Hogan Lovells - NYC (12)
Wilkie Farr - NYC (13)
Cooley - NYC (16)
Goodwin Proctor - NYC (17)
Dechert - NYC (18)
Sidley - NYC (20)
Paul Hastings - NYC (21)
Freshfields - NYC (22)
Proskauer - NYC (23)

[Anonymous User]

23 screeners. Bid heavy CA and NY.

Overall happy with how things turned out, but definitely a couple of surprise misses:

Sidley NY at 4 (how...)
K&E NY at 9
Clifford NY at 14
Cravath at 20 (....how)
Shearman NY at 27

[Anonymous User]

Anon above -- missed Sidley NYC at #2 if it makes you feel any better...

[Anonymous User]

Missed:

Arnold & Porter (DC) at #1 (fuck me, right?)
Nixon Peabody (DC) at #14
squire patton boggs (DC) at #16

25 slots and no back-to-backs, so I guess I can't complain too much.

[Anonymous User]

14 screeners. Not happy.

[Anonymous User]

14 screeners. Not happy.

Curious about this. Did you order firms based on maximizing your bids or based on your personal preferences? If you list what firms you missed where that may help future students.

[Anonymous User]

It's better to have 14 screeners at firms you're actually competitive at than it is to have 25 where you're only competitive at some of them.

If you were bidding low gpa NYC firms that's a solid number

[Anonymous User]

I only got 15, bidding mostly mid-range NYC firms. It sounds like people are gunning NYC much harder than last year.

Missed:

Sidley at 5
Mofo at 11
OMM at 12
Kramer Levin at 16
Clifford at 18
WilmerHale at 19
Linklaters at 20
Goodwin at 22
Dechert at 24
K&E at 25
Shearman at 28
Debevoise at 29